Chapter 29

 

                Seventy years after the Paterson silk strike and the houses in this part of town still looked like barracks: three-storied side-by-side homes whose colors had faded from pastel pinks and yellows into oatmeal and ash. Each house had been constructed in that cookie-cutter fashion so popular later with the construction of suburbia, but had begun here to house workers more than a century earlier. All had started out looking exactly the same with the same three front windows to each floor and the same porch with railings and stairs. Time had treated most in the same manner as well, peeling the paint of their sides, cracking their sidings, sagging its porches and stairs.

                These served as symbol of the silk industry for Maxwell, indicating the great wealth that had allowed for their construction, and the great greed that had brought about their eventual decline -- workers seeking more money for their labors from silk barons who struggled to maintain their monopoly. Even the relatively well-paid workers in Lambert's Mills grew passionate and stubborn in their demands, little realizing that under the guise of seeking fair wages and better working conditions, they undermined the structure of society here, dismantling in a few short years the dream Hamilton's followers had taken a century to build. In the wake of their protest, the strikes and the barons left behind a decaying city -- one that would never fully recover.

                No workers lived in these houses now, just welfare cases and drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes, and the assortment of desperately impoverished people who could not afford housing elsewhere, or were too weary from their minimum wage jobs to move. Ambulances came here hourly to pick up the bodies: overdosed, knife wounded, belly-shot contenders in a world very little different from the environment Darwin claimed made up the natural world. Women came out of her wounded in hundreds of ways, from desperate self abortions to violent marital encounters: daughters raped, sold, enslaved, sons killing fathers, fathers killing sons, mothers scalding babies they could no longer afford to feed.

                This whole section of town throbbed with a constant pain passers could feel from the sidewalk, an immense open wound city fathers tended to ignore except as statistics for reelection, politicians blaming this section for the increase in crime, fires, drug-related costs, playing this scene against the fears of the white dominated neighbors elsewhere to get increases in taxes so as to put more police on the streets.

                Yet most of those outside this neighborhood failed to grasp the desperate culture that existed here, the day to day living arrangements people in a warzone make, finding joy in the most primitive fashions because all else was denied them. Drugs were not a problem here; they were a solution. Violence wasn't a shame, it was a tool by which people managed to get on with their lives. These people didn't live like savages out of choice, but used what options they had to survive.

                As in all places, humanity here struggled with the basic concepts the so-called more civilized parts of the city did not understand: people here still loved each other, still tried to be tender, still shaped their existence around those things that shaped the lives of most people elsewhere.

                This part of the world was not devoid of its social institution. Many gathered around social clubs, associated with street gangs or other groups that helped keep the savage dog of misery from destroying their identity. As Maxwell walked down the street, he heard the strains of rap music and dance music competing between the clubs or out of the speaker-loaded trunks of cars -- signifying a cultural world had he -- despite his years living side by side with the variety of cultures -- did not completely understand.

                The deeper meaning of Paterson was here, buried under layers of assumptions that even the local residents did not fully comprehend. Most who passed through here going to or coming from work saw only the naked children charging along porches, even in winter, the smudges of dirt painting their faces, helping to disguise the bruises. Many looked the part of war victims, carrying scars of conflict they were -- by other accounts -- too young to have fought, arms in slings, legs in casts, breathing heavily from bouts of asthma or other chronic diseases significantly less frequent in wealthier communities in nearby towns.

                The grosses mistake most people made in viewing Paterson from the outside was to think of these people as people once thought of Native American Indians, as either too savage to be tolerated by polite society or too ignorant to know what polite society was, treating them with hand cuffs or kid gloves instead of on their own terms. Even when people here displayed signs of pride or success, they often brought down upon their heads ill judgements: black men in Cadillacs as pimps; Latinos wearing gold chains, muggers.

                Moving slowly through the dangerous streets, Maxwell caught glimpses and hints of the real life hidden behind tattered slate colored curtains or behind the smokey windows, real families struggling with real problems, finding the best solutions they could find in a world that didn't see any of them as human. But they were under assault here in a way not so evident in other communities, surrounded by a cast of characters that become shaped by the desperation and violence.

                Drug dealers -- with their outriders -- eyed Maxwell as he passed, a whispered alarm spreading along the porches or through the hurried telephone system that had become an underground network of communication here. Bruce had refused to come further than the post office, insisting that the conditions were dangerous enough for a lone white man than for a white and black man traveling together.

                "People are certain to think you're a cop and I'm your snitch," Bruce said. "They might kill you, but they'll do worse to me and my family."

                Maxwell squinted to make out the numbers on the houses for the one Bruce had given him. Most lacked markings of any sort, and Maxwell relied more on Bruce's description of the house: the coal-colored curtains that covered the windows, and the smug, thick muscled men that stood guard on the porch stairs like stone lions.

                In fact, the house he wanted had no numbers, and the dog-like figures Bruce described did not post guard. But Kenny recognized the place he wanted from the drooping, grey-faced figure that decorated its front, men -- mostly men anyway -- seated or slumped on its porch, gripping beer bottles or glasses, the more conscious figures less high than alert. The guard dogs of a peg pen with pistols strapped to their shoulders, bearing expressions of lackadaisical purpose, stood just inside the door, sampling some of the product management offered the clients.

                Maxwell actually recognized some of the faces from his visit to the Palace, where some of the thugs had done similar duty as guards, selling sex there instead of narcotics, and weapons there kept hidden. They might have recognized him if not for the change of scenery, street lights reshaping him into a slightly different image. They frowned at his approach and nudged each other into consciousness when he came too close -- more suspicious than alarm, each gaze narrowing as if to evaluate his authority. Was he a cop? Or competition? Did they need to notify the Boss of his arrival?

                The wailing sires from elsewhere in the city stirred them, too, like men aware of a swarm of bees yet not the location of those bees, glancing around at the darkness with each report, expecting a sudden attack. Even Maxwell noticed the sirens on his walk across town, catching sight of flashing light as police cars and ambulances screeded along other streets headed for other destinations. The whole night seemed alive with them, part of some on-going battle between the Mayor and Puck, the Mayor putting pressure on Puck by raiding well-known night spots.

                By the time Maxwell reached the first step to the porch, the men inside the doorway grew frantic, perhaps seeing his approach as the prelude to such a raid. Some even glanced up the street to see if they could spot the unmarked cars that they presumed crept towards the location to back Maxwell up.

                Someone laughed hysterically from inside the house.

                "What do you want?" asked one large man, mahjong skin and sharp accent hinting of some Caribbean upbringings, his handle-bar moustache a haphazard attempt to look like a cowboy.

                "I'm looking for somebody," Maxwell said.

                "Well, look somewhere else," an even larger man said, a large portion of his blue-black upper face hidden under a black ski cap.

                "I can't," Maxwell said. "I'm told here came here -- to score."

                The pack of men bristled -- including the nodding figures along the porch, each seeming to pick up on the bad vibe that suddenly sparked up.

                "Who exactly are you looking for?" the first man asked, stroking the edges of his moustache with one hand as his other felt down the side of his pull over sweat shirt towards a lumpy pocket.

                "Toad," Maxwell said.

                Several of them looked shocked.

                "Toad?" asked the man with the ski cap. "What the devil you want with him?"

                "That's my business."

                "It better be ours if you want to get inside," the man with the Mahogony colored face said, his hand finally reaching the pocket and sliding slowly inside.

                "I came to see him about his woman," Maxwell said.

                The Puerto Rican let out a howl. "That rag! You want to fuck that?"

                "I hear he has another woman now," Maxwell said. "A black one."

                The laughing stopped.

                "That's right, Julio," one of the other grey figures to the rear said. "Toad came in with two bitches tonight."

                "Shut up!" Julio said. "Nobody wants to hear you talk." Then, glaring at Maxwell. "That still doesn't many any sense. This ain't no whore house and people don't come here to fuck no whores. You want that kind of thing, you go down to the Palace or take up a room at the Hotel."

                "That's not the only reason I came," Maxwell said.

                "So what else you want?"

                "You know."

                "If I knew, Goddamn it, I wouldn't be asking."

                "And if I wanted to talk about it out here, I'd use a megaphone. I know what kind of place this is, and I know why Toad came here. I figured I might score something, and then get myself some of what Toad's got to offer."

                "You're fucking crazy," Julio said. "Nobody touches what Toad's got except the cops, and only the scummiest of them."

                "What I touch is my business as long as I pay for it."

                "Then who us you can," Julio said. "All this talk and you haven't show no green yet."

                An auditable sound breath escaped Maxwell as he reached into his pocket. The men on the porch shifted, weight causing wood beneath their feet to groan. Fingers eased down to their sides where Maxwell perceived heavy lumps. By the time Maxwell had brought out his wallet, five pistols of varying styles and calibers focused on him -- led by Julio with the biggest, darkness weapon of them all.

                "Okay," Julio said, motioning towards the dilapidated door with his gun. "You can go in. Toad's on the third floor. But I'm thinking with the place as dangerous as it is, you might want one of us to go with you."

                Maxwell shook his head. "I don't think I'll need an escort," he said.

                "Take my advice, you'll need one," Julio said, his voice stern, his gaze hard, his finger twitching on the trigger.

                "Maybe, but I'll still chance it," Maxwell said, taking another step closer to the porch. Julio did not insist and as Maxwell rose to the porch, the gang parted for him, leaving him to pass the sagging fools outside and pass through the door into the house itself.

                The door had been jimmied open and locks broken so often, no one had replaced them, so rusted hunks of metal hung, rattling slightly as Maxwell pushed the door in.

                No electric light shone from inside the house -- either from fear of discovery or lack of payment on the utility bills. Yet a soft glow seemed to emanate from within, illuminating nothing, yet providing Maxwell with an overall target in the dark. The lack of real light caused him to stagger over a body prone on the floor, with only a low groan from the figure to testify to its still living. Whether man or woman, however, Maxwell could not tell.

                It took a moment for the stench to reach him, as if the air from outside kept it from reaching the door. But once he encountered it, he staggered again, falling over no body this time, just his own two feet. The smell he had encountered in rescuing Suzanne could not compare to this, the house and its collection of bodies, magnified the assault, stirring it all into a broth of human indignation that was as violent as the streets from which these people had climbed. The walls contained it, brewed it, and only those living with it could stand to breathe it long without choking.

                Maxwell coughed, and coughed again, and continued to cough until willed himself to stop, drawing in less deep breaths, letting out each breath as quickly as possible. Yet even then, he retched, each step into the building like a journey into an area of chemical contamination.

                The other scents seemed more tolerable after that: the sweet lingering fragrance of marijuana, the sharper tang of hash, and then the more perfumery and tart scents of heroin and cocaine. The consumption of these -- with its content rising billows of smoke -- had worked their smells into the walls and floors and ceiling, painting them in textures of odor no amount of scrubbing would ever remove, defying even the human rancid stench of more human habits: the piss and shit and sweat only animals could produce.

                Once through the door, and over the first body, Maxwell found the interior filled with other bodies sprawled across the floors of rooms to either side of the door, rooms largely devoid of furniture or any other object with sharp edges. Stained pillows and uncovered mattresses covered the floor forming a soft shield against falling -- not that any of the figures in these rooms stood long enough to fall. Those standing were no customers, but watchful, wary stern-faced figures like the guards Maxwell had encountered on the porch, each frowning slightly at Maxwell's appearance -- he the sole aberration in this cloudy world, upright instead of prone, moving slowly, yet without a stagger, his feet struggling to find free space among the sprawled arms and legs.

                The glow, Maxwell soon discovered, came from a few candles near these guards, candles that provided light as well as a means to light joints or melt clumps of heroin, or even freebase. The one lamp that existed in either of the rooms off the front hall had red cellophane drawn over it, so that it emitted little more light than the candles did.

                Although not loud, music played, some tape of some performer Maxwell had not heard before, a droning voice with words made indistinct by lack of volume: not rap, not salsa, not rock, but almost an incantation, soothing enough to calm the more jittery customers, yet not so strange as to make them feel weird.

                As if anyone could come here and not feel weird, Maxwell thought as he took another careful step inside, then another, searching among the sprawled bodies for the face of his room mate or his explorer, certain that even here he would not be able to miss the melted expression of the man he called Nathienal and others called Toad.

                The men on the porch, of course, were wrong. People did make love here -- although doing a poor job of it. In a room that connected to the room to the right, Maxwell saw some of the sober staff working over one of the women, who was too stoned to know what they were doing, one man with his penis in her mouth, another pumping at her from the other direction, with several other men waiting their turn. She had blonde hair, and wore clothing to suggest she had not come off the streets of Paterson, but was among those unlucky children from the wealthier, surrounding communities -- a pathetic girl who had gone beyond social highs to become a victim of her addiction her -- one of those girls destined for greatness in porno films or an emergency room's overdose center.

                Even some of the floor people coupled, squirming like worms, fingers not quite dexterous enough to work off the other's clothing, humping as they struggled to figure out the complex mechanisms involved in undoing a button or a zipper, streams of saliva dripping down on their loved on like string.

                The luckiest of the crowd were those closest to unconsciousness, Maxwell thought as he spotted a gnome-like figure in the corner he mistook at first for the Toad, but a figure without the distorted features. This small character with wire-like close-cropped hair and a thin moustache of the same stuff hovered over a can a Sterno, the contents of a blackened spoon rapidly turning from powder to liquid. His intense expression hinted of pain for which the only cure was the litany of injections that had left his arms riddled with puss-ridden sores. For a moment, the gnarled figured glanced up, catching sight of Maxwell -- the small man's expression shifting through a series of emotions: alarm, panic, struggled calm, and resignation.

                Maxwell saw several of Wolfman's regulars -- from both the north and south sides of the bar, people now beyond the point of recognizing him, their faces caught in that limbo of bliss only drugs could create. They had gone beyond pain and suffering, beyond the usual giggling humor or the stern dissatisfaction they displayed at the bar. They were floating beyond human feelings, beyond even human experience, settling for a temporary sensation that only death could permanently provide.

                Maxwell shuttered, and continued to search through the faces, wishing he had insisted on Bruce's coming, for her certainly needed a guide through these circles of hell. He made the circle of rooms, moving through the first to the second, and then through the back of the house, to come out back at the hall -- each room once part of a legitimate home serving as living room, dining room, kitchen or hall, now devoid of former identity to serve one single abominable use.

                While he found more faces he recognized from various other locations, Maxwell uncovered none of those he came to find, making his way to the second floor via a shaky set of stairs in the hall. Each step felt soggy beneath his step, and his clutching the banister helped little since it shook,  many of its supporting spokes missing or cracked. He also had to step around the bodies sprawled here: stoned figures who had struggled to make their way down or up, struck down by the drugs they had ingested. A few seemed to have fallen with slivers of blood showing near their mouths or temples. Maxwell suspected these had suffered some serious injury, but dared not pause to make certain, climbing slowly. He needed to find those he came for. He could not rescue them all -- understanding the priest's seemingly cool remarks for the first time.

                Maxwell barely reached the second floor when a ruckus started on the first. The mahogany-faced man rushed in through the front door yelling: "It's the cops! It's the cops!"

                Maxwell halted, unable for a moment to comprehend what the man meant, barely able to even see the panicked figure in the dim light below.

                "It's a fucking raid!" the man shouted again, kicking at the figures on the floor, not to rouse them, but to shift them out of his path. He had not come to warn them, but his fellow staffers. Even if he had wanted to help the customers, most only barely stirred, and these those who'd not yet ingested enough drugs to escape their pain. Panic caught in their eyes like sparks. These jumped up, struggling to free themselves from the loose limbs of the less conscious, as the mahogany man yelled again and again.

                On some level, the panic spread even to those most incognizant the way fear of fire spread among animals, stirring up people, invading their dreams, forcing reality to knife through their protective skin.

                It was not fair. They had spent hard cash to create these bubbles, and the outrage of this disturbance showed in varying degrees on each face. Even those who seemed dead on the stairs stirred and struggled to stand, taking staggering misaimed steps down, puzzled by their impact with railing, wall or other stumbling, bumbling beings.

                Outside, the wail of sirens sounded, peppering the walls and windows with its sound, beating on the walls as if the police already pounded on the doors to get in. This, too, registered in all, giving proof of the shouting -- and slowly, the animal reaction turned vicious, as the more conscious threw aside those less conscious who got in the way. A man crashed through the railing and landed with a thud on the floor below. Others -- more lucky -- managed to cling to each other, falling side to bounce back after others passed down the stairs towards the front door.

                Out from each of the doors below, staff members appeared, their panic much more distinct on their faces, each realizing the implications of the raid, putting together the rumors that had circulated over the previous few hours. It was true. The King of Paterson was dethroned. The Mayor was making a move on all such places. Even in the low light, their faces revealed the sequence of thought: each seeing his world crumble amid flashing police lights. It was now every person for his or her self.

                All dashed for the front door only to have the mahogany man waving them back.

                "No use coming out this way, the cops are there," the man shouted, and just as suddenly the bolting figures reversed themselves and fled towards the rear of the house, towards the room that had once served as a kitchen and which still had a door out.

                The panic surged ahead of Maxwell as he took a course opposite the panicking population on the second floor. Here, the sea of gray flesh rose up in one single swell, roaring against him as he pushed his way through -- the previous quiet replaced with screams and shouts, although a wail as incomprehensible as the sirens outside. Or perhaps Maxwell simply spoke the wrong language -- lacking the same experiences from which to draw. Everyone else seemed to understand, even as they moved like lemmings towards the cliff of stairs, those in the lead shoved forward so that they could not help but fall, tripping up all those that followed so that in the end they poured down the stairs in a jumble of flailing arms and legs, the roar of which rumbled through the house in imitation of an earthquake. Some managed to rise again at the bottom, but many could not, moaning despite injections to ward off pain, their tattered bodies physically incapable of continued flight.

                By now, Maxwell could hear the sharp rasp of police radios filling in the spaces left between moans like static, harsher, more authoritive voices shouting for the crowd to halt.

                Maxwell moved through the second floor as he had through the first, his passage made easier by the lack of bodies. Only those incapacitated by drugs remained, a few pathetic figures sprawled at intervals along the walls and floors. He paused over each, studied each briefly, quickly determining none were the ones he had come to find.

                As he turned the banister to continue up to the third floor, Maxwell glanced down through the gap between railings and saw the dark uniformed officers struggling through the tide of crumbling humanity below, their flash lights slashing through the dark air like knives, their own stern faces displaying signs of shock -- even they, who had worked this beat for years, could not quite believe the scene.

                Maxwell continued up the next flight of stairs, stepping over the bodies of those who had stumbled, each body slithering under him like a creature devolving back to the watery beast that had first crawled to land, their blank expressions so horrifying to Maxwell he nearly closed his eyes.

                Human kind was not supposed to lack so completely signs of intelligence. Plants Creeley raised displayed more than these people did.

                The third floor disproved the lie told Maxwell on the porch -- with decaying mattresses filling nearly every vacant inch of floor in the first room -- a wall to wall house of decerped prostitution -- upon which a few bodies still squirmed. Maxwell stopped before each, a few times forced to pry these wretched lovers aside so he could make out their faces. No candles glowed up here, and the only light came from below, in flashes of the advancing police. More than once, he came upon lone figures that seemed asleep, but would not rouse despite his kicking at them.

                Downstairs the shouting increased, telling Maxwell that the police had reached the second floor, and scuffling, snapping wood and even gun fire suggesting disputes with trapped staff members. He could smell the sharp flavor of ozone telling him the police were making liberal use of their stun guns.

                In the first room Maxwell also saw a woman kneeling on a mattress, struggling over an unlighted can of sterno, striking and restriking wet, cardboard matches -- each of which crumbled in her fingers instead of igniting the flammable jelly. She sobbed over each failure, her tears making the matches wetter.

                "Damn! Damn! Damn!" she chanted as the shaking fingers of her right hand struggled to hold the match and spoon at the same time, while her left hand contained matchbook and syringe.

                In their panic to escape, management's dealers had abandoned a cigar box full of plastic packets, each containing white powder -- a found treasure as far as any of these people were concerned, whose own plotting would have settled for part of the contents to a single bag.

                If only she could strike a match, her panicked face said, then she could find a permanent solution, melting as much as she needed for her pain to stop forever.

                Maxwell's foot struck the edge of the mattress as he approached, shifting sterno slightly, and drawing up her gaze. It was not Suzanne. It was no one Maxwell had seen before.

                "You got matches?" the woman asked.

                "Sorry," Maxwell said.

                She lost interest in him and continued to yank matches from the wet pack.

                The second room -- except for the mattresses, clothing and two broken wooden chairs -- was empty. So was the third room, which one huddling exception.

                Jack sat curled in one corner, his arms clutching his legs. Maxwell rushed to him, prying him loose. Dried clotted blood marred one nostril, otherwise he looked unharmed. Jack's eyes had the same glaze as many of the stoned Maxwell had stumbled over on his rise from downstairs, and had the same sense of panic.

                No, his terror was worse.

                Each thump, cry and curse from downstairs caused him to wince, his eyes so tightly shut tears oozed out of corners like clear blood. When Maxwell touched his arm, Jack jerked it away, curling even tighter into his fetal position.

                "Don't hurt me!" he pleaded. "I didn't mean anything with her, honest. I didn't mean to get her knocked up. I didn't mean to send her to that disgusting little..."

                "Jack," Maxwell whispered, bending down as close to the man's ear as the herking and jerking would allow. "It's me."

                The movement slowed, and the man's arms unfolded from his legs enough for Maxwell to make out the string of needle marks along the insides of both -- not nearly so puss-ridden as some of the others on the floors below, yet thick enough to testify to significant and long-term use. Jack's eyes eased open, staring up into the dark.

                "Is that really you?" the weak voice asked.

                "Yeah, it's me," Maxwell said, crouching beside the figure, trying to be patient while below the thud of feet and the yell of patrons said the police had arrived on the second floor.

                "How did you know I was here?" the weak, but clearly relieved Jack asked.

                "Never mind that right now," Maxwell said. "We've got to get you out of here."

                Several loud pistol shots sounded, followed by the louder roar that Maxwell recognized at the report of shotguns. Fighting had broken out, and Maxwell had no desire to wind up in the middle of it -- especially if the mayor had authorized his officers to shoot first and ask questions later. Their dead bodies would not tell the police later that Maxwell and Jack were on their side against Puck.

                "Can you walk?" Maxwell asked.

                "Maybe," Jack mumbled, relying heavily on Maxwell to rise. His first step sent him reeling against a wall, where he slid down into a sitting position.

                "That's just about what I figured," Maxwell said, leaning down to yank Jack up again. He maneuvered Jack's arm around his shoulder then affixed his own around Jack's waist, then plunged towards the hall, both of them staggering now like sea sick sailors, neither able to walk in a totally straight line.

                They reached the top of the stairs. Below, a few bodies were sprawled near the bottom of the steps. One was not a patron, and a stream of red glistened from his chest. Maxwell could not tell in the flashes of light whether or not the figure was still breathing. Flash lights and flashes of pistol fire indicated a pitched battle underway on that floor, the booms of which acted like a back beat to a violent rock and roll show. At intervals, Maxwell caught sight of Puck's boys battling it out from one of the rooms to the left of the stairs, while an army of blue uniforms laid siege.

                "We're certainly not going to get out that way," Maxwell concluded. "So if we can't go down, we'll have to go up."

                Maxwell dragged Jack to the last remaining flight of stairs -- this was a half flight that led to the roof door common to many of the buildings in the area. Similar flat-roofed buildings occupied lower Manhattan -- extending for blocks. There, a whole different culture existed as people set up residences there. But in Paterson, such tenements were rare, and this sequence was part of a group of buildings that had largely vanished, extending little more than a single block.

                "Perhaps that'll be enough," Maxwell thought, and plunged through the door onto the roof.

                Jack giggled, and sagged against Maxwell, making it even more difficult to move. Maxwell leaned him against a crumbling brick chimney, then went back to the door. He snatched up several chunks of brick and wedged them in the cracks.

                It wouldn't be enough to resist the police for long, he thought, then glanced around for something else, and caught side of a rusting bed spring someone had abandoned here. He dragged that over and wedged that under the door handle, and found a few more pieces of board in which to help wedge that.

                He stood back and examined his work.

                "It won't hold anybody for long," he said. "But it'll buy us some time. Come on, Jack. Let's find a way down before the cops -- or Puck's boys -- get here."

                Yet even as he turned, Maxwell heard the thud of feet on the stairs just inside the door, and saw the door shudder as someone pushed on it from the inside.

                Perhaps a few of Puck's boys had thought of the same escape route, and now found themselves trapped between the police and the blocked door. Perhaps the police had dispatched them and were already onto Maxwell and Jack. The rasp of police radios sounded close from inside.

                Maxwell rushed back to Jack, wrapped himself in the man's arms and began hauling him across the roof tops away from the house of conflict. Behind him, a boom sound and the rattle of the bed springs to Maxwell that assault on the door had started. Unlike New York, the roofs here did not line up precisely, and Maxwell often had to help Jack over a roof divider, climbing up or down with great difficulty -- aware the whole time that the roof line ending this group of buildings rapidly approached. Then finally, they came to the last building and the wall which overhung Governor Street.

                "Up and over," Maxwell told Jack.

                Jack was a bit more conscious now, glancing at Maxwell as if he was crazy.

                "We're three stories up, you want to get us killed?"

                "There's a fire escape just below us."

                Jack peered over the edge. "That's a whole floor down."

     "You'll survive the fall," Maxwell said. "But you'd better hurry. I'm sure the police will soon have this whole part of town blocked off."

     Jack glanced over the edge again, then glanced back as a huge crash sounding, and police poured through the door to the roof, sending the bed springs crashing. Jack swallowed and nodded, and eased up onto the ledge, his pudgy fingers struggling to find a grip coming up with splinters and torn tar paper. He managed somehow to swing himself over, his short legs dangling a good three feet from the fire escape. Then, taking a deep breath, he let go.

     The sound of rattling metal banging against the brick side of the building told Maxwell Jack had landed. Yet he did not immediately follow, studying the police four roofs away, the flash of their lights spreading out like fireflies, the beams sweeping across the rooftop searching out the surface. They had not seen Jack or Maxwell. They did not yet know exactly where they were seeking, perhaps expecting another confrontation with Puck's small army.

     "What the hell is keeping you!" Jack hissed from below.      "Coming," Maxwell hissed back, but not in time. A beam of light settled on him, centering him in its circle of brightness.

     "Halt right there!" an official voice sounded from behind the source of light, the officers badge glinting slightly from the afterglow.

     Maxwell threw his legs over the edge. A loud click sounded, and then a bang. But the bullet arrived after Maxwell fell, carving a niche in the corner of the roof where he had been, the ping of its continued flight sounded off the building across the street. His fall was shorter and his landing softer than Jack's, since Maxwell landed squarely on Jack, and the impact rattled the fire escape even more than before, threatening to tear its bolts from the side of the building.

     "No need to tell them where we are," Maxwell said. "We couldn't have announced our location any better if we had had a bull horn."

     Up above, flash lights appeared, giving off just enough back light for Maxwell to make out four faces staring down. If any of the officers thought to fire again, the idea was quickly vetoed by the others. Too much a danger of shooting someone accidentally on the street below, Maxwell thought. Pursuit, now, would switch to radio, and he could hear the rasp of the radios above, and more disaster rasp of radios coming from somewhere on the street below.

     Throughout the canyons of the neighborhood, sirens wailed, police cars, ambulances, paddy wagons and fire engines rushing to and away from the block the way helicopters had likely rushed from war zones in Vietnam, carrying the wounded and the captured away, while brining to the scene additional troops. A hook and ladder pulled up at the end of the block below, its red and gold body full of flashing lights stretched from curb to curb as a impediment to anyone thinking of escaping by car.

     "Come on," Maxwell said, leading Jack down the metal stairs, their footsteps echoing as sharply against the walls of the buildings around them as the ricocheted bullet had.

     One flight, two flights, three flights, and they were down, taking the last segment to the street via a rusted metal ladder. Then, the whole fire escape rocked again, as one of the officers from the roof braved the fall as they had, landing on the top platform to give pursuit.

     "Damn," Maxwell growled. "Don't these fuckers ever give up?"

                By the time Maxwell reached the ground, he no longer tried to hurry Jack along. He simply dumped the man over his shoulder and ran up Governor Street in a direction opposite the flashing lights. He could hear the rattle and thump of feet descending the fire escape, and the shout from the cops for him to stop. Maxwell continued to run, though bowed over under Jack's weight -- Jack protesting the whole indignant procedure.

                "Just shut your mouth," Maxwell told him, "or I'll dump you some place with all the rotten dignity you deserve."

                Jack did not shut up, even when the whoop of a police car siren announced ground pursuit as well, even when Maxwell turned the corner and found the street rising ahead of him, and his own footsteps stumbling under him.

                Then with a sudden change of strategy, Maxwell turned a corner, and then made a quick turn into an alley -- passed the broken windows of a boarded up store. No one had seem him turn the second time and though the alley came to an abrupt end, Maxwell found at the end the rusting green trash receptacle he expected. He dumped Jack, lifted the lid open, then hoisted Jack up, the heavy man falling in like a sack of refuse. The lack of thump told Maxwell he had landed softly. Maxwell followed quickly, pulling the lid closed over them as he descended.

                "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Jack hissed.

                "Saving your life."

                "But it stinks in here."

                "It stinks in jail, too, and if you don't lower your Goddamn voice that's where we'll wind up."

                For some reason, Maxwell didn't mind the stench. Perhaps it stank less than the house had, thick with pieces of cut fabric and ends of sawed wood, rather than trash like that the Greasy Spoon would have tossed out. The smell seemed more honest, an odor of human experience.

                Or maybe fear of arrest had dulled his senses to a point where he could tolerate such places. He had, after all, bathed Suzanne whose scent had been significantly worse.

                Suddenly, he remembered Suzanne. She had been in the house somewhere along with Jack's 13-year-old girl friend. Maxwell had seen no sign of either during his climb to the third floor, but then he had found it difficult to see all the faces in the flowing of panicked people. They might have easily escaped his attention in the dark. Perhaps they were both sleeping safely now on the police station steps, waiting for Fat Wilson to come sleep with them?

                Outside the walls of their metal hiding place, footsteps sounded, accompanied by the rasp of a police radio, and the grumbling by one of the cops.

                "I know they turned the corner," one gruff voice said -- not close, perhaps standing at the end of the alley.

                "Maybe they went up the hill," said a slightly more nasally voice. "Or ran into one of the buildings."

                "They couldn't have gone up the hill in the time it took us to get here," the first cop said.

                "They could if they ran."

                "But one of them wasn't in good shape and the other one couldn't have run and kept on carrying him."

                "Then they're in one of the houses and we'll never dig them out -- not without a few dozen more of us and a couple of search warrants. Let's worry about the people we nabbed at the house."

                "You worry about them. We didn't get the one the Old Mayor wanted."

                The gruff cop laughed harshly. "The Old Mayor's crazy if he thinks we'd catch the Boss hanging around a place like that. That's why the Boss has underlings. They do all the work, they take all the heat. Forget these two, neither one of them was the Boss. And that's all the Old Mayor cares about."

                The other cop mumbled a little, and Maxwell could almost imagine him shaking his head doubtfully. "I had a funny feeling those two were more important than we're letting on."

                "Well, they're gone now, so let's not worry about it."

                The whispers of their radios faded along with the thud of their footsteps as the two officers headed back in the direction they had come.

                He waited. And waited. Despite Jack's grumbling about being uncomfortable, the drug's wearing off bringing back the more disagreeable side of his room mate's personality.

                "We'll get out of here when I think it's safe," Maxwell told him.

                And they waited some more, until the sound of sirens ended and the back and forth scuff of footsteps stopped. They waited until the normal sounds of night time Paterson returned, the crying of distant infants and the honk of distant horns, the jabber of Spanish spoken too quickly for Maxwell to understand or the rap of black music vibrating from the backs of cars.

                Jack, by this time, had nodded off, and Maxwell had to nudge him awake. Even then, Jack did not move at first, his face thick with confusion as to where he was and how he'd gotten there.

                "Time to go," Maxwell told him, lifted the lid to the container and climbed out.

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